Hackers claiming to support the Islamic State hacked into a county government's website in Virginia Friday, just one day after Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz were at Norfolk State University to attend a discussion on cybersecurity careers.
The hackers posted propaganda video messages in support of ISIS on the Isle of Wight County website sometime on Friday while the county offices were closed, public information officer Donald Robertson told local ABC affiliate
WVEC in Hampton Roads.
The county's website was fully restored shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, and Robertson said Friday's incident was the second time in two week that it has been hacked. He said he does not know why the local government's website was targeted.
The hackers called themselves "Team System DZ," which has been described as a group of "anti-Israeli Arab teenagers," says Zone-H, a website that tracks others that have been defaced, WVEC reports.
“They’ve hacked into some of the best computers in the world. So while we are certainly disappointed, we are going to take every step that we can to clean it up and make sure the public is not impacted by it,” Robertson told another television station,
WAVY.
The FBI is investigating the incident, which occurred just days after a pro-ISIS group
hacked US Central Command's social media accounts on Monday, forcing the military to take down the command's Twitter and YouTube pages. It is not yet known if the two incidents are related.
The hackers placed a black-and-white banner with the words "CyberCaliphate" and "I love you ISIS" replaced Central Command's usual logo on Twitter and YouTube before the pages were suspended.
But the military downplayed the effect of the hacking, saying no sensitive computer networks were penetrated and no state secrets were revealed.
"Our initial assessment is that no classified information was posted and that none of the information posted came from CENTCOM's server or social media sites," the command said in a statement.
Isle of Wight County, with a population of 35,000 people, is located just west of Norfolk.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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